Tag: Bangladesh

The New York Times reports on communal violence in Bangladesh.

Crowds of Muslims attacked Hindu homes and temples in eastern Bangladesh this week, raising concerns that the authorities are not taking steps to curb rising religious tensions.

Attacks on Hindus are not unusual in Bangladesh, but it is rare to see multiple crowds targeting temples in an organized way as they did on Sunday and Monday. The country’s human rights commission has initiated an inquiry into the episodes, which the panel’s chairman says appear to have been coordinated.

On Saturday, an Islamic group in Nasirnagar organized a protest against a Facebook post it found offensive. The post included an image of the Hindu god Shiva appearing at a Muslim holy site in the Saudi city of Mecca.

A Facebook post. Ffs.

The crowd demanded that the young Hindu man who created the image be put to death. Nevertheless, the group was given permission to hold a rally the next day, and mosque loudspeakers were used to mobilize an even larger group, said Anjan Kumar Deb, the vice chairman of Nasirnagar subdistrict.

On Sunday, hundreds of Muslims entered a Hindu neighborhood, where they ransacked 15 temples and the homes of more than 100 families, Mr. Deb said. He said that the mob “used long, hard sticks and locally made sharp weapons” to assault Hindus they found there, and that at least 20 people, including a priest, were wounded.

Because one guy did a Facebook post. Can human beings not grow up?!

The Hindu youth who is believed to have posted the controversial image was arrested on Saturday.

Of course he was.

Hindus make up about 11 percent of the population of Bangladesh, where Muslims constitute the majority, according to government statistics.

Kazi Reazul Hoque, the head of the country’s human rights commission, said local officials made a “gross mistake” by allowing the crowd to regroup Sunday morning. Bangladeshi newspapers offered similar criticism. The Daily Star, in an editorial on Wednesday, called the government’s inaction “baffling.”

“Has the government lost confidence that the majority of the people of this country, although religious, believe in a pluralistic society?” the editorial asked.

Bangladesh is a tragedy.

A press release from CFI yesterday:

A secular writer and activist targeted for death by militant Islamists in Bangladesh has been granted asylum in Germany. After receiving several threats due to her advocacy, Shammi Haque sought help from the U.S.-based Center for Inquiry, which supplied her with emergency assistance to help ensure her safe relocation.

22-year-old Shammi Haque has built a reputation in Bangladesh as a respected, outspoken, and fearless activist on behalf of secularism and free expression. On her blog, she wrote in support of democracy and human rights, and spoke against radical Islam. In public protests and demonstrations, she became a highly visible critic of religious extremism, a recognized symbol of secular resistance. This made her a target of those same militants who brutally murdered several writers and activists associated with secularism and criticism of radical Islam.

After receiving threats on her life and seeing her name appear on a public hit list of secular bloggers, Haque contacted the Center for Inquiry, a U.S.-based organization that advocates for reason, science, and secular values. The crisis in Bangladesh had become a central focus of CFI’s efforts, and in 2015 they launched the Freethought Emergency Fund, a program which lends assistance to those activists in places like Bangladesh who face mortal danger for exercising their right to free expression.

“When I was targeted, I was so afraid,” said Shammi Haque. “Every day I thought, this may be my last day, I may not see the next day’s sunrise. Connecting with the Center for Inquiry was a big opportunity in my life, for without CFI, I couldn’t have done anything. And CFI helped me immediately. Now I have asylum here, so I can live safely. So I am very thankful to the German government for giving me asylum so quickly.”

“Shammi is well-known for her courage and unwavering advocacy for secularism and free expression,” said Michael De Dora, CFI’s public policy director and coordinator of its efforts in Bangladesh. “She has shown that same courage throughout an ordeal in which she has been targeted for her unwillingness to be silent. We are delighted and relieved that we could have some hand in bringing her to safety so that she can continue to speak out and serve as an inspiration to others.”

“When I was born, my identity was ‘human being,’” said Haque. “When I grew up, my identity was ‘woman.’ Then they added ‘Muslim woman,’ and everybody forgot my first identity. I was fighting for my first identity, and I’m still doing that. I want only one identity: ‘Human being.’ All of my activism and my writing is for my first identity.”

It’s good that she is safe. Well done CFI.

Another one. Barry Duke at the Freethinker:

Nikhil Chandra Joarder, inset, who was hacked to death by at least two attackers outside his shop at the weekend, may have been killed for making derogatory remarks about the ‘Prophet’ Mohammed several years ago.

The IS-affiliated Amaq news agency is quoted here as saying:

Elements from the Islamic State assassinated a Hindu in the city of Tangail in Bangladesh by stabbing him to death. He was known for blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed.

In 2012, local Muslims had filed a complaint with police against Joarder, who owned a tailoring shop, for making derogatory comments about the “Prophet”.

Charged with hurting religious sentiments, he spent three weeks in jail, but the trial did not proceed “after the complainants withdrew the charges,” Abdul Jalil, police chief of Gopalpur sub-district, told AFP.

I get so tired of living in a world so full of murderous children. We’ve had more than enough time to grow up by now – it’s just childish to think it’s meaningful to complain about “derogatory comments about the ‘Prophet,’” let alone killing people over them. Childish. It’s like having a huge tantrum because someone doesn’t like your favorite sitcom character or comic book warrior. “The Prophet” is just a story, and a nasty story at that; let it go. But no: we have people to small to have a sense of proportion about their favorite stories but plenty big enough to hack people to death with machetes. I get so tired of it.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh is reeling from a series of brutal attacks on members of minority faiths, secularists, foreigners and intellectuals in recent months, including two gay activists and a liberal professor in the past eight days alone.

More grownups, fewer angry children with machetes.

In Dhaka today:

About 1,000 Bangladeshi authors and teachers marched through the streets of the capital on Tuesday, asserting their right to free speech days after a suspected Islamist group attacked writers and publishers critical of religious militancy.

That’s so brave of them. On protests here you know the police may be taking pictures. There you know guys with machetes may be taking pictures.

Despite the climate of fear caused by the attacks that follow the killings of four secularist bloggers this year, writers turned out in large numbers for the rally in Dhaka.

“No one is safe. First they killed bloggers. Now they are targeting publishers. Soon they will attack anyone who is progressive-minded,” said Khaledur Rahman, an author who is himself facing a death threat.

They will kill everyone, until only fascists are left.

Police joint commissioner Monirul Islam said investigators were looking closely at a home-grown group called Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) as the latest attacks bore the hallmarks of earlier killings of bloggers for which it took responsibility.

The little-known Islamist group wants sharia rule in secular Bangladesh and has vowed to kill critics of extreme Islam.

“They just tell these youth that the bloggers are the enemies of Islam. Nobody has read the blogs. They just blindly follow what the ABT says,” said a police investigator.

Of course nobody has read the blogs; that would be haram.

AQ in India says it did it. Big surprise there.

The claim of responsibility by the division, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, was made in statements posted on Twitter on Saturday. One of them said the two men were “worse than the writers of such books, as they helped propagate these books and paid the blasphemers handsome amounts of money for writing them.” A second statement, titled “Who’s Next,” describes categories of people as “our next targets.” The list includes writers, poets, intellectuals, newspaper or magazine editors, reporters and actors.

It always does. That’s always who’s on the list – the people who influence thought and ideas.

As “hit lists” of secular writers circulate on the Internet, many writers and journalists have become hesitant to publish work that could attract the attention of Islamists, and a growing list of activists, fearing for their lives, have applied for asylum in Western countries.

Of course they have. What the murderers are doing works. They are scouring Bangladesh of secular voices.

Mr. Dipan’s business had published “The Virus of Faith,” the book that made Mr. Roy a target for militant groups.

Mr. Dipan’s father, Abul Quashem Fazlul Huq, said in an interview that after hearing about the attack on the first publisher, he became worried about his son and tried to reach him by phone. He went to his son’s business and, once the authorities had broken the lock, walked into his office, and saw he was not in his chair.

“I saw that his neck was cut,” he said. “The whole floor was covered with thick blood. I could not stand there anymore. I left the place.”

For decades, Bangladesh has struggled to contain a network of domestic militant cells, some of them linked to political opposition groups. They have regrouped this year, carrying out a series of killings, often in crowded spaces in broad daylight.

Over the last month, the attacks and threats have proliferated. A month ago, Western intelligence services received information suggesting that the Islamic State terrorist group had plans to ramp up its activities in Bangladesh. Shortly thereafter, two foreigners were shot.

On Monday, the Ansarullah Bangla Team, a homegrown terrorist group, sent a letter to a Bangladeshi cable news station threatening attacks on news outlets if they continued to allow unveiled women to report the news.

The week before there were bombs at a procession of Shiites, which killed a teenage boy.

Allah is merciful.

Prepare to be disgusted.

Newsnext Bangladesh reports:

Dhaka  – Police on Saturday arrested an NGO executive for his reported social media comments condemning Saudi Arab stampede that left more than 700 pilgrims killed during hajj Thursday.

Police officer Inamul Haque said they picked up Mohan Kumar Mondal in south-western Satkhira district for the reported comment. They also arrested one of the friends of Mondal as he tried to prevent police from arresting him at Munshiganj of Shymnagar sub-district.

Another story linked in the margin of this one reports that three people from Bangladesh were killed in the stampede.

Police detained Mondal after a local leader of the ruling Awami League party lodged complaint that the accused hurt Muslims’ religious sentiments by posting derogatory comments on Facebook over the hajj.

Mondal, director of a local non-governmental organisation called Leader, had deleted the comments 24 minutes after he posted on his Facebook timeline, one of his social media friends said.

But many others were seen sharing screenshot of his comments saying they uphold Mondal’s views over the deaths during Muslims’ pilgrimage at Mina of Saudi Arabia.

Ugh ugh ugh. Grunts of disgust are all I can muster for this.

I suppose next we’ll hear that both of them were killed by a mob.